EtherCAT enabled advanced control architecture

EtherCAT is becoming quickly adopted globally by the semiconductor, solar and FPD manufacturing industries. This Industrial Ethernet technology is an acknowledged SEMI standard that provides extraordinary real-time performance and topology flexibility, while meeting or even undercutting traditional fieldbus cost levels. EtherCAT enables advanced control architectures: instead of closing the high performance control loops locally in the peripheral devices, EtherCAT gives one the option to control even high speed processes over the bus and thus overcome limitations of the legacy approaches. EtherCAT enabled controls have simplified interfaces and limit supplier dependencies while giving access to previously closed embedded control algorithms.